[5] The hospital appointed as an attending surgeon William B. Coley, who pioneered an early form of immunotherapy to eradicate tumors.

[5] Around 1910, James Ewing, a professor at Cornell University's medical college, established a collaboration with Memorial Hospital with the help and funding of industrialist and philanthropist James Douglas, who gave $100,000 (equivalent to $3.4 million in 2024) to endow twenty beds for clinical research, equipment for working with radium, and a clinical laboratory for that purpose.

Rhoads had run chemical weapons programs for the United States Army in World War II, and had been involved in the work that led to the discovery that nitrogen mustards could potentially be used as cancer drugs.

[23][24] In 1963 some doctors objected to the lack of consent in his experiments and reported him to the Regents of the University of the State of New York which found him guilty of fraud, deceit, and unprofessional conduct, and in the end, he was placed on probation for a year.

[32] In 1977, Jimmie C. Holland established a full-time psychiatric service at MSK dedicated to helping people with cancer cope with their disease and its treatment; it was one of the first such programs and was part of the creation of the field of psycho-oncology.

[19] In 1985, Karl Welte [de], Erich Platzer, Janice Gabrilove, Roland Mertelsmann and Malcolm Moore at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) purified human G-CSF.

[36][37][35] In 1990 it entered an agreement with Amgen to receive royalties for the recombinant granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, the basis for neupogen and neulasta, earning the institute over $100 million.

[40] During his tenure, he helped build new facilities, strengthened the bond between MSK's clinical and research arms, and fostered collaborations with other institutions, including Weill-Cornell Medical College and Rockefeller University.

[43] The following year, MSK was rated the third most successful nonprofit in terms of FDA-approved drugs and vaccines, behind the National Institutes of Health and the University of California system.

[45] That same year, a collaboration with IBM's Watson was announced with the goal of developing new tools and resources to better tailor diagnostic and treatment recommendations for patients.

[47] Baselga resigned in September 2018 after information came out regarding millions of dollars he received from pharmaceutical companies without disclosing a financial conflict of interest.

[59] In April 2022, MSK announced a $50 million donation from The Starr Foundation to aid in expanding funding for basic cancer research and discovery science.

[60] In June 2022, a small trial of an experimental treatment found that tumors vanished in all 14 patients diagnosed with early stage rectal cancer who completed the study by the time it was published.

[65] The Center for Image-Guided Intervention was opened in June 2010 in the Memorial Hospital building to oversee image guiding activities across MSK.

[73] The center launched its India facility in Chennai in August 2022, to provide telemedicine services in collaboration with iCiliniq to facilitate second opinion from the cancer specialists, without the need to travel to a U.S.

[64] In 2004, the Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences was opened at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

The dual degree program takes advantage of the close proximity of these three institutions for collaboration on biomedical research and medical training.